What a month this has been! Work has been absolutely crazy, leaving me with no time for myself or the blog.
I reach back home tired and drained, with little will to do anything but flop down on the couch with a cold bottle of water and a book.
Sadly for me, though, the book I’m reading is doing little to hold my interest. It seemed interesting enough – a story on Chandragupta’s cunning about 2,500 years ago and a cunning political king-maker in the present day. But the treatment is shoddy, the characters aren’t well developed and the plot is little snippets of political games in the past and future.
But I find it really hard to leave a book mid-way, and so I’m plodding along with Chandragupta’s Chant by Ashwin Sanghi, just waiting for the infernal thing to end.
One good, actually great thing, that I achieved this month was finally understanding the exposure triangle in photography. The combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO finally worked! I’ll share some pictures when I can bear to open my laptop again.
The loud ringing of the alarm on my cellphone jerks me out of bed and running helter-skelter to face the day every morning. I rush through the house like a whirlwind – brush, bath, get dressed, put out some cat food, grab a cereal bar and race to work. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Instead of waiting for the last alarm (I have three, in case you’re wondering) to jolt me into action, I can get up with the first, or even the second, and ease myself into the day. On the days when I’ve managed to do that, I make myself a cup of hot lemon tea and do nothing until I’ve finished it. It’s my time to think, dream, imagine…before I go forth to meet the world. I’ve noticed that on those days I’m calmer, more focussed and less stressed out.
But I haven’t really done anything about that observation…until recently. And for that, I have to thank Pilar Gerasimo for her article, Reclaim your mornings. According to Pilar, you need to create a morning ritual
Image by Ray Devlin via Flickr
for yourself and ensure that you do it everyday. Your ritual can be long and elaborate or short and simple, but the key to success is to have a minimum commitment – i.e., on the days when you don’t have enough time, spend at least 5 minutes with yourself before you take on the world. Pilar also shares her sister Andrea’s morning ritual. She…
“lights a candle and a stick of incense, then puts on relaxing music. She unrolls her yoga mat, sits, and — at minimum — takes three long, centering breaths. Generally, those three deep breaths lead her into a gentle yoga practice that may last anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. At the end of her practice, she meditates for a few moments, sending loving thoughts to her friends and family, and setting some key intentions for the day. When her mat-based practice is complete, she makes tea, has breakfast, and only then does she turn on her phone, consult her calendar and begin the active portion of her day.”
Her minimum commitment from this long ritual is to “Unroll the mat, sit, take three breaths. That’s it. The rest is negotiable.”
This inspired me to design a morning ritual for myself.
Image By derekGavey via Flickr
I find a comfortable spot to sit in – could be cross-legged on the bed, or on the drawing in the drawing room. I take three deep breaths, and do a short guided meditation to start the day on a positive note. Then, I draw a Card for the day to give me a feel of the vibrations and the things to watch out for. After that, breakfast, and then I’m ready to face the day. My minimum daily commitment is to take three deep breaths and draw a card for the day.
I’ve been doing this since the past three weeks, and already, I feel a tangible difference in the texture of my days. What small ritual can you create for yourself every morning, or do you already have a morning ritual? Tell me about it in the comments!
If you have any artwork or photography to share, please leave a comment, a link back to your blog and your e-mail address, and I’ll feature it on an upcoming Friday Frame!
You Believers is a powerful, cathartic story of casual evil and of how the worst things can be faced so that we might not only survive, but grow. A young woman goes missing, and her mother uproots her life to find her daughter. But it is not just the heartbreak or the deep mystery of the hunt for lost loved ones that Bradley so convincingly explores. Rather, with the help of an amazingly dedicated searcher, family and friends somehow learn to move past unspeakable horror and celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit. Offering a vision that is at once ruthless and utterly compassionate, Bradley renders the search for logic, meaning, redemption and even hope in the domino force that is human nature. Part Southern gothic, part crime, part haunting suspense story, You Believers takes us on an infinitely harrowing journey that rewards the reader with insight into how we might endure horrible events with faith, strength, and grace even while it reveals the ripple effects of random violence.
The book starts with Shelby Waters, a Southern girl from the small town of Suck Creek, recounting how she got her calling to become a searcher. It was because of her sister Darly, who got away from Suck Creek to become a nurse and get married and settle down. Then one day, she went missing. The rescuers found her bones in the woods, her head at one place, her body at another. This isn’t Darly’s story, though. This is the story of Katy Connor, the 30-year old woman who went missing a few weeks before her wedding. It’s the story of a mother’s pain, a fiance’s sorrow and a sociopath’s need to cause pain.
It’s classic, almost. Like the story of Persephone picking flowers in a field one spring afternoon. The earth opens. Hades comes roaring up in his chariot, black horses digging up dirt with their hooves, hot breath swirling from flared nostrils. With a quick swoop of thick, muscled arm, Hades snatches the girl, drags her down to the underworld. You know the story. A mother comes to the rescue, finds her daughter has eaten six seeds of the dark fruit, pomegranate seeds that crunched between the girl’s teeth, red juice running from her lips. And the mother’s world, the whole wide world, is changed.
Bradley keeps the story moving with a lot of the characters narrating parts of the story. Shelby’s character is well-drawn out and you can understand why she does what she does, what keeps her going, her sorrows and her determination. Liz’s (Katy’s mother) sorrow as a mother whose child has gone missing is palpable. Her effort to hold together for the sake of her daughter and her sanity are heart-wrenching. And then there is Jesse, the psychopath who picked Katy up, who raped and assaulted another young girl in his neighborhood, and his arrogance, his need to brag and to hurt and break things.
The narration could have been a bit tighter, but the story itself is gripping, so you can forgive Bradley her few ramblings. Being a woman, it was all the more chilling a read. We take so many things for granted, don’t observe enough, tend to be a bit gullible, and go through life thinking nothing bad could ever happen to us. But it can take a minute for your life to turn upside down – a slight delay in locking the car once you get in or ignoring your gut instinct could be devastating.
This book got me to give thanks for each day that I am safe, and to make sure that I take every precaution that I can – when I’m out and even when I am home.
Read it, it just might give you the push you need to make you more aware of your surroundings no matter where you are.
I jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon less than a year ago, and am constantly amazed at how my “community” has expanded. I’ve bonded with fellow bloggers, met people who share the same interests as I do, learnt from some of the most inspirational figures of recent times, and followed breaking stories as they happened – minute-by-minute.
As I used the platform and starting interacted with people, I heard their conversations, learnt more about their lives and supported and cheered with them as they triumphed or grappled with life. So what if a lot of them stay half way around the world, or if I haven’t met any of them and probably never will? The conversations and friendships built are real enough. Which is why if one of them were to tell me about a social cause and ask for my support, I would help out to the best of my ability.
And I wouldn’t be alone, as a whooping 84% of the social media savvy aged 30-49 and 55% of those older than 50 used conversational social media to discuss philanthropy. The Philanthropy 2.0 research project also found that 20% of survey respondents between the ages of 30 and 49 gave more than $5,000 through social media discussions, demonstrating the huge potential for social-media savvy fundraisers.
Image by .imelda via Flickr
The funds being raised by leveraging technology are astounding. Twitter users alone donated more than $33 million to the American Red Cross fund for Haitian earthquake victims. Innovative companies like Twestival, which realize the potential of 140 characters and hashtags, are using social media for social good by connecting communities offline on a single day to highlight a great cause and have a fun event. Since 2009, volunteers have raised close to $1.2 million for 137 nonprofits. Of that amount, $15,734.53 was raised in India alone.
Image by taotsu via Flickr
Using the power of hashtags and retweeting, individuals too can make a mark. One recent example is that of @ourmaininabiko. Using an idea that was sparked in the shower, he sent out a tweet calling for eyewitness accounts and personal stories on Twitter. Less than 45 minutes later, the first submission came in. Based on the more than 80 submissions to that single tweet, 2:46 Quakebook was born – a Twitter-sourced collection of personal accounts and pictures of the 11 March 2011 Japan quake and its aftermath. The book is a collaborative effort between bloggers to help raise money for Japan – the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the Japan Red Cross.
India recently witnessed its own political revolution of sorts, and a big portion of that battle was fought online – through the creation of a website and by leveraging social media to spread activist Anna Hazare’s message of anti-corruption. Millions of people across the nation joined Hazare in person and in spirit, as he sat on a fast-unto-death outside the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. His demand was for the passage of a Jan Lokpal Bill (Citizen’s ombudsman Bill) that would give more power to the people to fight corruption in all areas of public service. Candlelight vigils and peaceful protests were organized around the country, forcing the government to accept all of the demands put forth by the activists and backed by the common man, corporates and Bollywood stars.
Social media has truly emerged as one of the most powerful Web 2.0 technologies. Not only does it allow us to forge strong friendships, it enables us to spark ideas that turn into revolutions that lead to the ouster of dictators, bring about social change, and raise money for those in need. Ultimately, how we use and leverage it depends on us.
Have you ever made donations or volunteered your services by leveraging technology?
There’s an ebook revolution of sorts happening out there, which I am stubbornly resisting. I tried ebooks, still read them sometimes, but there’s something about a real, physical book that an electronic version just cannot replace. The smell, the feel, the notes scribbled in the margins.
Billy Collins captures this love I feel beautifully in Marginalia. Enjoy!
Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive – “Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” – that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like why wrote “Don’t be a ninny” alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s. Another notes the presence of “Irony” fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. “Absolutely,” they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. “Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!” Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written “Man vs. Nature” in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird signing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- “Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”
In our daily busy lives, as we go about meeting deadlines, keeping the house, looking after husbands, pets and children, it can be easy to forget the one person who needs the most care – you. If you’re bemoaning the lack of time, worry not.
premasagar via Flickr
Here are 10 things you can do for yourself in all of 10 minutes.
1. Meditate – The next time you’re online, download a few meditation podcasts, or check out my Spiritual Sunday posts and choose a piece of meditation music or guided meditation you like. Sync it to your music player (iPod) or phone. Next time you need a break, plug in your headphones and tune in to radio: you.
2. Collect images for an idea file/vision board – Dreaming of a relaxing spa treatment, a beach holiday, or something else? Set aside 10 minutes to scan through old magazines looking for pictures that speak to you. Clip them out and stick them into an envelope. Next time you need a mini break, get the envelope out, bring out a sheet of paper and a glue stick, and stick those images to make a collage of your very own vision board. Put it up where you can see it as you race through your busy day.
3. Breath yoga – Known as Pranayam in Yoga practice, are a set of simple breath exercises you can do in 10 minutes (or less, or more).
4. Listen to music – Music can change your mood – relax you, pep you up, make you dance or cry or fall in love all over again. Better still, if you’re at home faced with an unpleasant task (like cleaning up the house), put on some peppy music, turn up the volume, and dance as your clean!
Image by Kuzeytac via Flickr
5. Have a cuppa – A hot cup of tea or coffee, a slice of cake (if you want to be indulgent), quiet time for 10 minutes, and you’ll feel shiny and new. Promise!
6. Mini home facial – Put on some soft music – Chopin, Mozart, anything instrumental. Exfoliate your skin, apply a face mask, put a slice of cucumber over your eyes, and lay down for 5 minutes. Rinse. Apply a face cream. Fresh, smooth skin can make you feel absolutely wonderful!
7. A few quick photos – Take your mind off your to-do list. Grab your camera, yes, even your phone camera will do. Frame and fire off a few shots. Admire your mini creations.
Cover of Messages from Your Angels
8. Quick 1-card reading – Get yourself an oracle deck – one of my favorites is Doreen Virtue’s Messages from your Angels. Next time you have 10 minutes, do a quick 1-card reading for yourself. The messages on the card deck are very uplifting, and might just help you shift your focus so you can approach your day from a calmer place.
9. Read a poem/passage you love – I’ve found that reading a poem can help me shift my mood, no matter what kind of a mood I am in.
1o. Make a 5-min cup cake – click here for the recipe. Then snatch another few minutes to indulge in your guilty treat. If you’re feeling super generous, share it with your significant other! 😉
There you have it! A list of 10 things you can do in 10 minutes to recharge your batteries.
Do you have any favorites of your own? Do share in the comments!
I don’t know what’s come over me these days. While planning out my day at work, I also write up a list of to-dos that need to be done after work, but once I leave office, I think “Hell with it all. I’m just going home.” And kiss the to-dos goodbye. It’s not like I have anything pressing to do at home, either. Nor do I go home and get cracking on things that can be done around the house. Interesting stuff too, mind. Like experimenting with photography. Learning the tarot. Cleaning up my art table so I can make some art.
Instead, I go home, change into my sweats, and play Bubble Explode on my iPhone like my life depended on it. That game is evil, I tell you! It has me totally obsessed.
Seriously though, I don’t like this change that has crept upon me. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I have zero motivation. I know myself well enough to know it’s more than sheer laziness (not to say I’m not lazy, but I’m not this lazy!) So, what is it?
A lot of the things on my to-do list are related to long-term goals – like going for a walk and cooking evening supper minus carbs (to lose weight), doing 1 chapter from Learn the Tarot (to, of course, learn how to read the cards), clean the art table (so I can start creating art once again).
I know from experience that long-term goals can change sometimes, so the first thing I asked myself was if I still cared enough about said goals. I do!
Since it wasn’t as simple as sheer boredom with my goals, I knew I needed to dig deeper. Time to bring out a notebook and a steaming cup of tea.
Image by angietorres via Flickr
I listed each goal on a separate page, then wrote the words “I’m afraid I won’t be able to achieve this because” underneath, and without stopping to think or analyze, I wrote down all the thoughts that came to mind. For e.g., under the goal of losing weight, one of the things I listed out was that since working out regularly for 6 months gave me no tangible results, I was destined to stay overweight.
Once I had repeated the exercise for all three goals, I went back and confronted my demons head-on. To counter the fear of never being able to shed the excess weight, I checked my food diary from when I was exercising. Based on Gary Taube’s book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It, I now see that I was eating too many carbs and hidden sugars back then. So it is worth my while to try out a course correction in my diet combined with a moderate workout to help me achieve my goal of slow, steady and permanent weight loss.
Finally, I asked myself if there were any other thought patterns that were pulling me back and keeping me de-motivated. Surprisingly, I found that I am actually overwhelming myself by over-thinking things. Take going for a walk, for instance. How hard is that? Not hard at all, right? Now, start thinking and imagining these steps – fight through traffic to get home, keep purse in its designated place, drink some water, maybe have a fruit, change into tracks and tee, find socks and wear running shoes, lock the house, go for a 30-45 min walk, come home, shower, change into sweats…Doesn’t the very thought of the entire process overwhelm you?
Note to self: Do NOT break down a simple walk into a thousand steps ‘cause it does not help! Instead, just think get home, go for walk. See, that’s so simple!
What about you? Ever felt like you were lacking motivation? What did you do to overcome it?
If you have any artwork or photography to share, please leave a comment, a link back to your blog and your e-mail address, and I’ll feature it on an upcoming Friday Frame!
Lately it seems like almost all my friends are going through a tough time with their marriages. So many of them are getting divorced, or the love is long gone and they’re just staying together for practical reasons like their children or finances. And in most of the stories I’ve heard, it’s almost always the husband’s fault that things aren’t going right. There are the cheaters, the beaters, the emotionally detached ones, the downright insensitive ones. Every time I hear their stories, I send out a silent “thank you” to God.
I’ve been blessed to have a wonderful hubby. Yes, we have fights. There are days when he drives me absolutely nuts. There have been times when in the heat of a fight I’ve wanted to give the whole marriage thing up. There are times when I think he’s an insensitive jerk.
But even now, after 13 years of knowing each other and 7 years of marriage, my heart skips a beat when I look at him. Even now, he does the sweetest, most wonderful things for me.
Like never forgetting birthdays or anniversaries – a lot of my friends are amazed by that…
letting me sleep in on weekends while he finishes up the laundry…
just knowing when I’ve had a stressful day at work and turning the TV off to talk to me or give me a massage…
sharing the dinner heating and clearing up chores…
making an effort to come out with me on weekends even though sometimes all he wants to do is stay at home…
giving me my space…
letting me be all silly sometimes…
making me feel like a girl and a woman – I don’t know how he does it…
being cool with me having a slumber party with my girlfriends…
making me a fresh fruit gateaux because that’s one of my favorite deserts and he makes it so well!
